• The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has been delaying a decision for months about whether to punish the Apache ASL Trails housing complex in Tempe, Ariz., for the sin of renting 85 percent of its units to the hearing-impaired -- for whom the facility was actually designed (equipped with comfort and safety features to serve the deaf).

However, HUD has threatened to withhold federal funding because Apache is suspected of illegally discriminating against the non-hearing-impaired (who under guidelines should, HUD believes, occupy three-fourths of Apache's units).

State officials and Arizona's congressional delegation have voiced pride in Apache's mission, but the HUD secretary's indecisiveness has left Apache tenants in limbo, according to a September Arizona Republic report. [Arizona Republic, 9-28-2013]

• This year, the Florida legislature passed the Timely Justice Act to cut short the legal dawdling that allows death row inmates to postpone their execution -- sometimes for more than 25 years.

Among the first "victims" of the act was to be Marshall Gore, set to be executed in September for two 1988 murders.

However, his date was once again postponed -- because Florida's tough-on-crime attorney general had scheduled a re-election campaign fundraiser that conflicted with her presence at the execution. (Gore will instead die in January.) [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9-12-2013]